A central Iowa nonprofit will soon open a new women and children’s shelter with triple the capacity of its previous facility.
Hope Ministries’ new space in Des Moines has 50 short-term shelter beds and 50 long-term beds. It has classrooms, an art therapy room, and a fitness center.
Kathy Coady, the agency’s chief development officer, says the staff will also serve three free meals a day to residents in the dining room.
“This plan was born out of strategic planning that our staff and leadership and board did back in 2015,” Coady says. “This has been nine years of prayer and work and collaboration in the community, so we’ve been actively working on this for years.”
Coady says the space not only offers them more room for beds but also for more services.
“Our previous location was short term and long term life recovery,” she says, “but we were not able to do same-day shelter at our previous location, so that will be an expansion of our services here.”
Staff and residents will start moving to the new shelter in two weeks.
According to a housing inventory count in January, there are only 50 other emergency shelter beds reserved for women in Polk County. Based on a point in time count by county service providers, nearly 250 women were homeless in July.
(IBy sabella Luu, Iowa Public Radio)